Recover deleted trash Mac OS X
Yup, it happens to everyone every once in a while. You delete something you didn’t mean to and then, in a robust environment like the Mac OS X, you empty the trash. All is not lost IF you didn’t fill up the newly freed up space with other data. Here are some suggestions in recovering your files – yes, it is going to be tedious and you are not going to be able to simply hit ‘undelete’ to recover your folder structure intact.
- (Ideally) Boot from another system and attach your laptop as another drive. If you are unable to do this, try to use the laptop as little as possible – in other words, don’t copy data onto it. Even surfing the web saves tmp files which will render some of the files you hope to undelete/recover a challenge.
- Attach an external storage device to save the recovered files from step #3.
- Download one of the following – should run around $99 for personal license – ‘File Recovery 2009′ or ‘Data Rescue 3′ or ‘Phoenix Stellar.’
I tried both, ‘Phoenix Stellar’ and ‘File Recovery 2009′ and found FR2009 much faster. It did the job though about 30% of my photos (Canon Raw cr2 files) were corrupted. I am not sure how ‘Phoenix Stellar’ would have handled those files. Thank God, I have a habit of taking 3 frames for most shots I take as I bracket the exposure in drive/continuous mode.
If you are a migrant from the Windows world, note that undelete/recovery will not list your directory/folder structure that you can simply restore. You will see a listing of recoverable files by type and have to manually save them to the external storage/drive you connected in step #2. In my case, I deleted complete iphoto libraries with several thousand pixs neatly edited and categorized. I restored from my last backup and added the missing files recovered from the above process.
Good luck…and, backup up frequently.
Windows 7 – beta on Vmware Fusion as a guest OS
Runs beautifully as a guest OS.
Let us take a step back for a second. What is Windows 7? Think of it as Windows XP (NOT Vista) being cleanedup, patchedup, stabilized, new (long over due) features added with a modest cosmetic change. Yes, it is heavy on hardware resources like any modern day OS that is keen to make a visual impact so do not hold the higher hardware requirements against Windows 7 or its creator.
Setup/installation and running it within Vmware Fusion on a Mac 15″ unibody went smooth. This article from the Vmware blog is a good start. I opted to run the 64 bit version of Win 7 and so far, am a happy camper 
.
SIDEBAR – my MacBook Pro is 4gb, 2.8 Core Duo w 500 mb and I run only one guest at a time. At some point, I will upgrade my MacBook to 8gb and 1Tb so as to run more than one guest simultaneously.
Vwmware Fusion – on Mac 15″ unibody (10.5.7) w XP Pro guest OS not reading SD Card
This happened with the newly released Apple Macbook Pro 15″ unibody (10.5.7) with a built-in SD card reader. Mac OS X could read the SD card fine while Windows XP Pro as a guest OS from within Vmware could not read it – after the first time it read it (upon install). Opened support request with Vmware which was a 24 hour delay but, impressive tech person who resolved the issue within minutes.
Device Manager in Windows guest OS had a Yellow question mark next to USB/Card reader. Upon updating the drivers on the guest, the SD card reader was visible again.
So, the simple answer is – troubleshoot the problem as though you were dealing with a stand alone version of the guest OS / Windows XP Pro.
XP Pro works like a charm within Vmware Fusion.
